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I got an email from Hearing Tracker with the results of a survey showing Phonak and Oticon at the top of almost every category except connectivity so I may be sacrificing sound quality for connectivity.

I got an email from Hearing Tracker with the results of a survey showing Phonak and Oticon at the top of almost every category except connectivity so I may be sacrificing sound quality for connectivity.

Am I allowed to post a link to the survey results?

I don't see why you can't post link to a survey here.

The Oticon OPN has direct streaming to the iPhone so I would think that you wouldn't have to sacrifice sound quality for connectivity with the OPN. I don't know why the survey rate Oticon low on connectivity. Maybe the respondents were talking about older Oticon models which don't have MFI. But the latest Oticon OPN has the MFI feature.

So far mixed reviews. The audiologist at Costco spent over an hour with me setting up the 4 different mrofiles I can use, General, Restaurant, Music and Outdoors. The can all be modified and tweeked through the Resound Smart App on my iPhone.

The RIC hurt a bit in my canals, very tender in there so there is an amount of discomfort which will hopefully recede

The biggest issue for me is getting used to the small noises that have gone away over the years. I was walking to the car and had all this background noise which turned out to be birds twittering. My printer sounds like an old car grinding gear, I can hear my eyeglasses click when I fold them up.

I'm also hearing a lot of high end noise that I haven't heard in years and frankly didn't miss. The audiologist told the Cala's are known for being aggressive in the higher frequencies so the app allows me to bring down the treble. Along with this is a certain amount of "whistle" to the sound of my own voice which can be annoying.

I have 6 months to decide and I will give it the best effort I can but the deal breaker may the integration with the phone for call. The sound is abysmal. I have been using a Plantronics earpiece for the last two years that had excellent sound, the Resound "Phoneclip" system can't hold a candle to it. There's no getting around it either, one needs the mike to make calls.

It's only been 4 hours but I'm already thinking about trying another setup to see how the phone sound quality is. I may have to forgo iPhone connectivity.

So far mixed reviews. The audiologist at Costco spent over an hour with me setting up the 4 different mrofiles I can use, General, Restaurant, Music and Outdoors. The can all be modified and tweeked through the Resound Smart App on my iPhone.

The RIC hurt a bit in my canals, very tender in there so there is an amount of discomfort which will hopefully recede

The biggest issue for me is getting used to the small noises that have gone away over the years. I was walking to the car and had all this background noise which turned out to be birds twittering. My printer sounds like an old car grinding gear, I can hear my eyeglasses click when I fold them up.

I'm also hearing a lot of high end noise that I haven't heard in years and frankly didn't miss. The audiologist told the Cala's are known for being aggressive in the higher frequencies so the app allows me to bring down the treble. Along with this is a certain amount of "whistle" to the sound of my own voice which can be annoying.

I have 6 months to decide and I will give it the best effort I can but the deal breaker may the integration with the phone for call. The sound is abysmal. I have been using a Plantronics earpiece for the last two years that had excellent sound, the Resound "Phoneclip" system can't hold a candle to it. There's no getting around it either, one needs the mike to make calls.

It's only been 4 hours but I'm already thinking about trying another setup to see how the phone sound quality is. I may have to forgo iPhone connectivity.

Your phone call sound quality is very tinny because your aids are only producing the high frequency sounds you audiogram says you are missing, and your open domes will leak any lower frequency sounds.

Streaming issue will be similar ( whether MFI or with a separate streamer) with other HA manufacturers.

So far mixed reviews. The audiologist at Costco spent over an hour with me setting up the 4 different mrofiles I can use, General, Restaurant, Music and Outdoors. The can all be modified and tweeked through the Resound Smart App on my iPhone.

The RIC hurt a bit in my canals, very tender in there so there is an amount of discomfort which will hopefully recede

The biggest issue for me is getting used to the small noises that have gone away over the years. I was walking to the car and had all this background noise which turned out to be birds twittering. My printer sounds like an old car grinding gear, I can hear my eyeglasses click when I fold them up.

I'm also hearing a lot of high end noise that I haven't heard in years and frankly didn't miss. The audiologist told the Cala's are known for being aggressive in the higher frequencies so the app allows me to bring down the treble. Along with this is a certain amount of "whistle" to the sound of my own voice which can be annoying.

I have 6 months to decide and I will give it the best effort I can but the deal breaker may the integration with the phone for call. The sound is abysmal. I have been using a Plantronics earpiece for the last two years that had excellent sound, the Resound "Phoneclip" system can't hold a candle to it. There's no getting around it either, one needs the mike to make calls.

It's only been 4 hours but I'm already thinking about trying another setup to see how the phone sound quality is. I may have to forgo iPhone connectivity.

Don't give up until you have tried for longer. Until you adjust to full gain correction in any hearing aid you will not really be able to tell what the quality of the sound will be like. The comfort of fit in your ears may be a deal breaker but could also just be a matter of different domes or different wire length or just getting used to them.

I found the Resound Linx less comfortable in my ears with good sound after quite a bit of tweaking. Then I had the LiNX²- similar to yours - which were more comfortable in my ears but never matched the sound results I got with the Linx - mainly due to internal noise from the aid. The made for iPhone aspects were great but ultimately I ended up with the Phonak V90s which are a lot more comfortable in my ear canals and gave a really good hearing result. I do miss the made for iPhone features and miss being able to listen to my iPad/iPod/iPhone/Mac any time without disturbing others.

The Opn is an option but can't compete on price with Costco's offerings.

Just don't be too quick to change based on quality of sound because you will find them all rather tinny until you adjust to hearing high frequencies again.

Thanks for the advice an encouragement.
I have also found then when my right hand is near my right ear, as when scratching my head, I get a blast of feedback in that ear. Hopefully I can a visit in tomorrow to see if the high frequency in that ear can be toned down.

Your phone call sound quality is very tinny because your aids are only producing the high frequency sounds you audiogram says you are missing, and your open domes will leak any lower frequency sounds.

Streaming issue will be similar ( whether MFI or with a separate streamer) with other HA manufacturers.

I think AdamsHouseCat hit the nail on the head here. To Recoil Rob, try to stick your fingers in your ear to stop your open domes from leaking out the low frequencies to see of the streaming sound from the iPhone is better. If yes, then it's obvious that the open dome is the culprit, not because the streaming is bad.

This is just a physical limitation of the open vent fitting for folks who have normal hearing in the low frequencies like your audiogram shows, Recoil Bob. You want the open vent to allow the lows and mids to come in naturally because only the highs need to be amplified in your case. This works great for normal listening, but when streaming, the open vent fitting is detrimental to the quality because there's no natural sound coming in through the open vent, only streamed sound coming in from the receiver. So the open vent becomes an escape hole in this case rather than the inlet hole for the lows and mids, where the amplification is already mild in the first place since you don't have hearing loss in those regions.

Beside the obvious work around of plugging up your ear canal when streaming, maybe ask the Costco HIS to see if they can boost the lows and mids in streaming mode up to more than what you really need to compensate for the leak due to the open vent. Of course it goes without saying that you only want to overboost the lows in streaming mode only. For other non-streaming modes, overboosting the low is not desired.

Another thing to remember is that your HA receiver is not going to be able to recreate the very low bass (like below 150Hz) very well just due to the fact that the receiver is so small and can only amplify the lows maybe down to the 250Hz at most. So comparing it against the Plantronics Headset is not a fair comparison because remember that you can't fit the Plantronics speaker inside your ear canal like you can fit the HA receiver. I know what you mean because I also own a pair of Plantronics Voyager Focus headset that produce VERY decent low bass. Despite my wearing a bass dome with a very small vent hole (no open vent), the streaming music from my iPhone is decent but no where has the low bass quality that my Plantronics Focus or my Bose QC3 headphones can produce.

Thanks for the advice an encouragement.
I have also found then when my right hand is near my right ear, as when scratching my head, I get a blast of feedback in that ear. Hopefully I can a visit in tomorrow to see if the high frequency in that ear can be toned down.

Your Costco HIS should be able to tame your feedback by running the feedback control test on your HAs to see where the resonant frequency(ies) that cause the feedback is (are) and eliminate it via a number of ways like reducing the headroom/notching in those frequencies or maybe shifting them out a little bit. The feedback control algorithm should set all these things automatically after the feedback scan. The HIS doesn't have to do anything except to initiate the scan, I think.

Because the feedback control comes at a cost of reducing some headroom, the fitter may choose not to run the feedback control initially and wait to see if the patient complains about feedback or not before taking action to fix the feedback. Otherwise just running the feedback test right up front without knowing whether there's a real feedback issue or not may unnecessarily waste the headroom for nothing because there's a chance that the patient may not experience feedback at all (although this is probably fairly rare).

But with the feedback control in place, I think you should be able to put your hand up close to our ear and not cause any whistling at all.